Alright, so this year (2011 Build Season), as lead programmer of Team 263, we were working on our robot's arm. We had a ridiculously large gear ratio, and the arm generated a lot of torque. Our adviser said to put in a limit switch, that way we can program it to stop before it overdid itself pushing downwards. I said to him, "naah no need it will be fine...". Lesson learned, basically, I didn't realize that our arm was still trying to go down, on the last few days before the end of build season, and because I hadn't noticed, the arm bent a heavy steel rod, which completely dumbfounded some of the mechanical members of the team, how the arm managed to do that. Not only did the mistake stop there, the captain then tried to pry the sprocket off the bent side of the steel rod to salvage it, in turn bending the metal sprocket, and
again in turn our other mechy team member, helping the captain, stood on the frame above the wheel, causing the axle to come loose. So my mistake essentially bent a steel rod, bent a metal sprocket, and make a wheel axle come loose, all on the last 2 days of build season.
